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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692000">Bad Aim and a Broken Nose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastet5/pseuds/Bastet5'>Bastet5</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Wild Hunt [26]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>FBI: Most Wanted (TV 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Hopefully) Non-Graphic Mentions of Mortal Wounds, Blood and Injury, Dreams and Nightmares, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Mentioned: Minor Character Death, No One On the Team Gets Hurt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:47:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,577</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastet5/pseuds/Bastet5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>April 2018</p><p>Sometimes the case and its aftermath aren't done with the team, even after they are very much done with it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clinton Skye &amp; Original Female Character(s), Kenny Crosby &amp; Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Wild Hunt [26]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Bad Aim and a Broken Nose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>#1: Based on this reference in Chapter 1 of "A Time to Heal": "On thankfully rare occasions, both she and Kenny got a little violent coming out of their nightmares. It had been a while since that had happened to Kateri, but Kenny had almost hit her on the Scott Weitzen mission  and, once the previous year, had actually hit Jess in the face  after a mission that ended badly (perp dead and bystander dead. Makes for a really bad day.) The same night, I almost hit Clinton, too. Convenient for him he’s just a lot bigger and lot stronger and was just able to catch my arms before I injured myself or him."</p><p>#2: This one-shot, like the last one, I might also continue in the future if the plot bunnies strike.</p><p>#3: Happy early Thanksgiving to all.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For every person added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List, there were only two ways off of it, as Sheryll and the others on the team knew far too well. Either you were captured alive and brought to justice, or you were killed in the defense of civilians, hostages, or arresting officers, depending on the circumstances. The goal of every hunt was always to bring the fugitive to justice, not to bring justice to the fugitive—<em>we’re the fugitive hunters, not judge, jury, and executioners. That’s the court’s department</em>—as Jess often put it succinctly. The goal was always to capture the fugitives alive so that they could be brought before the courts and face justice for their crimes.</p><p>That was the goal.</p><p>Reality, however, did not always cooperate, and that goal didn’t always work out.</p><p>Some fugitives, the team could capture alive whether through negotiating or other means.</p><p>Others, for the safety of the team, SWAT, other agents, the hostages, or other bystanders, had to be … neutralized … to stop the threat.</p><p>
  <em>Neutralized … it sounds terrible, but we can’t bring them all in alive.</em>
</p><p><em>Sometimes … to keep more innocent lives from being lost, you have to stop the threat</em>.</p><p>
  <em>Sometimes you have to take one life to save many more.</em>
</p><p>Then there were the fugitives … and the worst of all to deal with and subdue … who preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, rather than being captured.</p><p>
  <em>I’m going out, they think, so I’ll take as many as I can with me, especially cops.</em>
</p><p>This case, regrettably, had been one of the latter. The fugitive, a horrible man with a rap sheet a mile long, whose name just would not come to Sheryll’s exhausted mind at that moment despite a week-long hunt for him, had started shooting from the depths of the house he was hiding out in as SWAT and the team finally closed the net on him. <em>Small mercies the family weren’t home. </em>(Yet more innocent lives lost senselessly would have just taken the case from worse to horrible.)</p><p>The only saving grace had been that fugitive’s first barrage on the approaching officers had been born barrage than targeted fire, and though there had been several close-calls and two grazes, everyone had made it behind cover without serious injury. (A nearby tree and several panes of glass in the trucks had not fared quite so well, and the sprays of flying glass shards had actually done more damage than the actual bullets). The fugitive’s anger and his desire to take out as many cops as possible with him had made him reckless, and within no more than five minutes, the gun-battle had ended as quickly as it began when the fugitive became visible in one of the windows, enabling Clinton to take him out with one well-placed bullet to the head. The gun-battle had ended quickly … but for the lives of several … not quickly enough.</p><p>In the ensuing rounds of fire, two SWAT officers had been killed, and a third seriously injured apart from those who had received grazes or glass-cuts in the first assault.</p><p>It got worse, though.</p><p>There had been no warning, no indication prior to the team’s arrival that this fugitive would prefer the blaze of glory, take-as-many-pigs-with-me-as-I-can kind of death. That had meant that there had been no time to evacuate the civilians. No time at all. One moment the officers had been approaching the house to execute a warrant and the next they had come under heavy fire and had to scatter for cover.</p><p>And the civilians in the nearby houses had been in the line of fire, too.</p><p>There was a reason one of the most important rules of gun safety was ‘be sure of your target AND WHAT’S BEYOND.’</p><p>After the crack of Clinton’s rifle going off brought silence in its wake, only seconds passed before, as SWAT was starting to move in on the house, a woman’s piercing scream split the night. The scream had come from one of the adjoining houses, where several young women, attending a nearby college and rooming together that semester, were staying.</p><p>Kat’s head had come around with a jerk at that piercing sound, and at a motion from Jess, she had split off from Clinton and bolted towards the house with Sheryll in pursuit. Kat was the almost-medic of the team, but until they knew the cause of that scream—something bad had clearly happened, but what?—Kat having backup was prudent. The scene they had found in that house was horrific. A young woman with bright blond hair … <em>natural, not the bottle kind </em>… college age … with all her life ahead of her … was lying on the living room floor. A stray bullet from the fugitive’s gun had caught her in the neck, and blood was gushing from the neck wound, a red pool spreading out around her, and she was lying there on the floor gasping for breath. Her friends and roommates were in shock, and Sheryll tried to keep them back, while Kat attempted to render assistance until EMS.</p><p>There was nothing that could be done, though.</p><p>Even Kat’s vaunted stores of med supplies that, somehow, she found room for in the many pockets of her cargo pants could do nothing to staunch the gushing wound, though Kat had tried her hardest. <em>Neither of us wanted to just stand there and do nothing, though nothing we could do would make a difference in the end</em>. Kat had knelt in that spreading pool of blood that was standing the girl’s blond hair a sickly red, vainly putting pressure on the wound … <em>must have hit the carotid</em>, and one of her friends had held the girl’s hand until the flow of blood slowed and the girl’s body went still, her eyes fixed in the thousand-yard stare of death.  </p><p><em>At least she didn’t die alone</em>.</p><p>That was one of the worst things about this job … sometimes you couldn’t save everyone, sometimes bad things just happened and there wasn’t a d**n thing you could about it.</p><p>By the time bodies had been collected … <em>having to listen to her friend’s … Jane, that was that poor girl’s name … having to listen to those sobbed stories about her … poor Kat looked like she could barely stand it</em> <em>… the smell of the blood and all the blood on her clothes can’t have helped</em>…, statements had been made, and everything at the scene had been completed, evening had turned into night, and Sheryll and all the others were more than ready to have this case over and done with and get home.</p><p>
  <em>I want to go home. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I want to kiss Charlotte and hug Anais, and I want to not think about work.</em>
</p><p>There was only problem. It was a four-hour drive from Utica back to New York City. The team did not have the jet, and after a long and trying day, everyone was rung out, and no one felt like driving, especially after several short nights of sleep.</p><p><em>Let’s wait until daylight before we even considering driving back, and even then, we’ll be switching out a lot, I think</em>.</p><p>To save them all from another night of sleeping in the bus, Jess had gotten them a hotel room for the night. Beds for four people. A stuffed chair for a fifth. And someone would still get the floor. <em>That is if all of us actually want to sleep after a day like this. </em></p><p>Four people were dead, including the perp.</p><p>And that was only from the final raid.</p><p>That didn’t even count the several people who had either died to get the fugitive on the Most Wanted List in the first place and the one who had died while the team was still hunting him down.</p><p>The case, the deaths, it had been hard on everyone, but Kenny and Kat … <em>as if the last six months haven’t been hard enough </em>… seemed to be especially shaken. Neither were strangers to death. Neither were new to the job, but Jane had died underneath Kat’s hands, and Jess had quietly told Sheryll in the hotel parking lot as the others went inside that Kenny had been next to one of the SWAT officers who was killed and had gotten … caught in the spray … from a head shot. Even the thought made Sheryll’s stomach lurch.</p><p>
  <em>That explains the look in his eyes.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A stark reminder of his tours.</em>
</p><p><em>Those memories aren’t something to leave you</em>.</p><p>Everyone settled in at the hotel room for a long night. Clinton and Jess, who seemed intent on having a rematch of a previous chess game … and not sleeping, settled down at the small table. <em>Must have been an off-duty game. </em>Even as her mind still mulled over the case and she worried a little about the youngsters, Sheryll pulled out her tablet from her bag and claimed the chair by the window, <em>which is stuffed but somehow not that soft at all. Hotels.</em> Work and personal emails had been piling up in her inboxes over the course of the case, and <em>it’s time I made some headway into the mess</em>.</p><p>The youngsters settled down on the beds. Their intentions weren’t to sleep, but soon enough anyway Kat, who had seemed to be teetering on the verge of getting sick with something for days, laid down to get some rest, and Kenny eventually crashed, too. And, then, as if she were the last of a string of dominoes, Hana, who had been sitting up, propped up by pillows, listing to music on her phone, fell asleep, earbuds in ears and phone in hand.</p><p>
  <em>The way the pillows are, she shouldn’t get a crick in her neck.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We’d wake her if we tried to move her.</em>
</p><p>One hour and several dozen sorted emails later, Sheryll was getting sick of going through emails.</p><p>
  <em>The amount of spam and junk I manage to get among all my actual work and personal emails I get should not really be astounding me after all this time, but somehow it still does.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>At least I don’t have it as bad as Kat does. Work email. Personal email, and anything some of her old aliases get sent by her CIs.</em>
</p><p>About midnight, Kat started to get restless. Between her PTSS … <em>courtesy of getting kidnapped and locked up in a shed by a sadist with a fondness for beating up prostitutes. Thank God we got him in time before he could get back and hurt her</em> <em>… that day took a few years off of all of our lives, Clinton’s especially</em>… her claustrophobia … <em>which just exacerbates PTSS</em> … an interesting childhood … <em>in the least complimentary sense of the word from the occasional story she’s told </em>… and her years with her former unit in Organized Crime … <em>most of her teammates really should have been fired or at least written up for blatant … stupidity and incompetence … it really would be convenient from time to time if those were fire-able offenses, </em>the younger woman was semi-frequently troubled by nightmares. Usually, she would usually settle back down quickly or wake up with a start and gasp, but not tonight it seemed.</p><p>When Sheryll started to return from the bathroom a little while later, she noticed that Kat’s restless had continued to increase, enough that Clinton was now looking up from yet another chess match and glancing over toward the bed, a pinched, concerned look on his face. A few low-voiced, muttered words fell from Kat’s lips, and her head started to flop back and forth on the pillow. Sheryll paused by the end of the bed, listening for a moment.</p><p>
  <em>Not English. </em>
</p><p><em>Can’t understand enough to know whether it’s French or Mohawk</em>.</p><p>Kat and Clinton would periodically talk between themselves in Mohawk if they wanted to talk privately. In a bus that wasn’t even as big as an RV, when all six of them were congregated inside for large portions of the day for sometimes a week or two at a time, it was hard to get much of any privacy. Learning selective hearing or, at least, projecting the air of obliviousness and deafness had become quite necessary. <em>Even if we can’t not hear some private conversations, you pretend to ignore what you can’t actually ignore and never ever repeating any of it. Makes things a little less awkward. </em>Having grown up speaking French and Mohawk, and not English until years later, as she had revealed, Kat would … occasionally … if extremely distracted or when jolted from her thoughts respond in French (<em>or Mohawk, occasionally</em>), instead of English.</p><p><em>Which Kenny always finds funny for some reason</em>.</p><p>“Do we wake her?” Sheryll asked in an undertone, stopping by the table on the way back to her chair.</p><p>Clinton frowned thoughtfully for a moment but then shook his head, “Not yet. Give her another minute first. If she doesn’t settle back down, I’ll wake her up.”</p><p>A few more minutes passed, and Kat, who was curled up facing the wall, at first seemed to settle back down, but then she started to almost thrash. It was warm that April, even with the AC running, and Kat had only her leather jacket thrown over herself for a blanket, but with her restlessness, that had slid down to her waist as she slept. The arm that had been tucked up against her chest flew up and over, as she started to flop onto her back, and hit Hana in the leg.</p><p>
  <em>What the h**l? </em>
</p><p>The sudden movement startled Barnes almost as much as it did Hana, who woke with a gasp, a yelp, and start, her phone falling from her lap as she looked around with sleep-dazed eyes. After that one short, sharp movement, Kat stilled again to smaller restless movements, but her mutterings grew louder, loud enough for Sheryll to catch a couple familiar words and identify the language as French.</p><p><em>Not Mohawk then</em>. Clinton seemed to have picked up a little bit of French from Kat, but probably not enough to interpret what she was muttering, caught in the midst of whatever dream was haunting her.</p><p>
  <em>Must be a doozy of a nightmare.</em>
</p><p>It took only a second for Hana to realize what was happening, and she reached over to try to shake Kat awake, but caught in the depths of a nightmare or a nightmarish flashback, Kat didn’t immediately rouse, but then Clinton was there.</p><p>Chess-game abandoned, the sniper had sprung to his feet at Kateri’s first sharp movements, and it took him only seconds to thread his way through the crowded hotel room to the bed. (Sheryll had immediately put aside her tablet and made to rise to help but let Clinton, who moved faster, attend to his own partner. The two had their own way of doing things, and after the events of December … <em>which shall haunt us all for a long time to come </em>… letting Clinton deal with his unsettled partner was probably best for all involved.)</p><p>Hana scrambled off the bed, wavering unsteadily on her feet for a moment in her haste until she found her feet. <em>I’ve nearly taken myself out stepping on my own shoes more than once … or stepping on Anais’ toys</em>. Her face was full of uncertainty, probably torn by the same feelings that Sheryll herself had had to face the past five months.</p><p>
  <em>How do you help your teammates sometimes without making things worse?</em>
</p><p>Five months had passed since the near-disasters that were December’s missions, missions that had haunted the other non-injured members of the team even after Kenny and Kat had both healed physically. <em>Didn’t know what we were going to find when we searched that barn. Didn’t know what she could have been put through before we got him. </em>Knowing what could have happened was almost as mentally scarring in its own way.</p><p>That mission had left Kat, especially, with both mental and physical scars. Long-sleeves were now a more regular piece of her wardrobe. On top of that, <em>PTSS and yet more reasons to hate small spaces. </em>For weeks and weeks, even after returning to duty, Kat had been so jumpy, flinching at loud noises, flinching even at friendly touches or sudden movements. As a mother, a woman, and a former detective, all that … <em>gives me a very bad feeling about some parts of her childhood</em>. Over time that jumpiness had slowly faded, but still occasionally reappeared if someone really surprised Kat.</p><p>
  <em>How do you help someone when you don’t fully know the root of the problem?</em>
</p><p>Kat’s … twitchiness … was not totally a new thing even before December had taken a couple of years off of all of their lives. Granted December had heightened it by an order of magnitude for a couple of months, but Kat had always been a little twitchy, more prone to jumping when surprised and more displeased by the idea of having her back to a crowd than simple undercover instincts … <em>even with her old unit watching her back … </em>could explain. PTSS and getting kidnapped would explain a lot of her reactions, but not all of them and not to the degree that they had presented.</p><p>There was something more … some events behind all those reactions and instincts, but what those events were, Sheryll didn’t know. Kat was not the type to spill her life story over a cup of tea, <em>especially to the rest of us. Kenny or Clinton, maybe, but not the rest of us</em>. It was not that Kat did not trust them, though sometimes she seemed warier around Jess. Rather, it was just not her way and not her personality. <em>Even getting her to talk enough to even spill her life story would take some work</em>. Kat was quiet by nature like Clinton and not prone to an overabundance of talking usually,<em> though what they do on stakeouts and drives, who knows?</em> Getting her to talk that much would be a stretch. <em>She’s not a talkative drunk, though I’ve never seen her more than slightly tipsy. Hyped up on caffeine and sugar doesn’t do it either. Just makes her even twitchier.</em></p><p>However, between listening to what periodic stories Kat did tell, filing away other tidbits she let slip intentionally or accidentally, and meeting some of her friends and former … teammates … <em>in the loosest, shallowest sense of the word</em>, there were enough pieces for Sheryll to get a very basic sense of the … <em>possibility of the … </em>whole, and what possible conclusions she came to sometimes … <em>aren’t always so good</em>.</p><p>That bad feeling that twitchiness and those previous flinches had planted in Sheryll’s mind … <em>sometimes after those many psych classes, too much time on the beat, I know things I really wish I didn’t </em>… only grew further with what happened next when Clinton tried to rouse Kat from her nightmare.</p><p>The sniper sat down on the edge of bed, reaching out and shaking his partner’s arm as he called her name.</p><p>One second Kat was lying flat on her back, asleep, and the next she was upright and scooting backwards against the headboard, one arm half-raised defensive move as if to ward off a blow, the other coming up in an offensive move that Clinton blocked by just bodily catching hold of her arm.</p><p>Kat’s eyes were wide-open, but there was something about her expression, though Sheryll was on the other side of the room, that made the older woman think she was not really awake. Clinton put his free hand on her knee, and the cadence of his voice changed from English into Mohawk. <em>Every language has its own rhythm, its own music. </em>The flow of words was lost as the AC cycled back on, but Sheryll could still hear the tone of his voice, soft and soothing. (What he was saying Sheryll would not have understood anyway. While Kat and Clinton spoke in Mohawk periodically. even via osmosis, all Sheryll had picked up were the words she surmised via context to mean “Morning,” “Thank you,” and “please.”)</p><p>Slowly, as Clinton spoke, recognition and comprehension returned to Kateri’s face, and the younger woman’s posture relaxed, and she dropped her arm back into her lap, as soon as she noticed it was raised a look, with a look that was almost either horrified, terrified, or a mix of the two. The murmur of her voice was added to Clinton’s, and the two spoke for a minute, and then Clinton reached how to touch her hand. His brow immediately furrowed when skin touched skin, and Sheryll noticed him then press the back of his hand to Kat’s forehead in a move that Sheryll, as a mother to a young daughter, was intimately familiar with. <em>Done that to Anais a lot. Charlotte, too, a couple times. </em>The increased frown spoke louder than words.</p><p><em>I had a feeling Kat was coming down with something</em>.</p><p>Whatever nightmare had haunted Kat, Sheryll hoped it was just a fever dream … <em>for her sake, but I’ve got a bad feeling.</em> Sheryll knew when to trust her instincts, as an agent … and a mother.</p><p>Even as her mind ran, Sheryll reached for her go-bag by her chair and the medicine bag within. <em>IB for the fever. Then she’ll feel better</em>. (Just a high-enough fever without any other symptoms could make you feel awful.) She always carried medicine with her.</p><p>Sometimes … being a woman was a pain, literally and figuratively.</p><p>Then, before Sheryll could do much more than reach for her medicine bag, the night just had to get more complicated.</p><p>Since the disaster that December had nearly been, Kenny and Kat had become especially close, shared trauma and probably some long talks helping to bind them together. Perhaps hearing his friend cry out as he dreamed, Kenny himself began to get restless, much more quickly than Kat had, and the muttered words that spilled from his mouth were horrifically familiar, words that Sheryll had heard from her before, words that indicated where his mind had gone … back to Iraq or Afghanistan or some mixture of the two.</p><p>“Contact left.”</p><p>“Man down.”</p><p>“Medic?”</p><p>Sheryll swore colorfully in the quietness of her own mind as Jess came to his feet, almost as quickly as Clinton had a few minutes before, and approached the bed, taking care not to get too close.</p><p><em>Don’t want to get hit, and Kenny hits harder than Kat can</em>.</p><p>“Crosby,” Jess snapped, tone firm.</p><p>Kenny’s mutterings continued unabated along the same line, Jess’ call seeming to just feed into the dream. On the other side of the room Kateri, wide-eyed, and Clinton were watching, and Hana had whirled at the first sound of Kenny’s voice.</p><p>“Crosby!”</p><p>Still no change.</p><p>“Crosby,” Jess snapped again and reached out to shake him awake.</p><p><em>Kenny’s usually a light-sleeper when he’s having a bad day</em>.</p><p>The next few seconds were a blur of movements that even Sheryll’s experienced eye had trouble following. Jess suddenly tumbled backwards to the floor, one hand clutched to his face, and Kenny was half-on his feet, one hand going toward his Glock sitting innocently on the night-stand between the beds. Hana was quicker, though. One hand slammed down, pinning the gun to the table, while the other shoved Kenny so that he tumbled back onto the bed.</p><p>The jolt of the fall seemed to bring him fully awake, and Sheryll, as she leapt to her feet, saw awareness fully enter his eyes, surprise and confusion quickly replaced by a stricken expression when he saw Jess on the floor.</p><p>
  <em>Battlefield instincts. </em>
</p><p><em>Wasn’t even aware of what he was doing</em>.</p><p>“Boss!”</p><p>“Jess!”</p><p>The voices overlapped. Kenny had frozen in his tracks, shocked into stillness, his eyes wide and horrified, so it was Sheryll who reached Jess first and helped him to his feet. Blood was dripping from his nose. <em>Probably a black-eye,</em> <em>too, tomorrow</em>. <em>That’ll be a story to explain at home.</em> And his lip was split.</p><p>“I’m okay,” Jess said, though his voice was nasally, as he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and pressed it to his nose, “Forgot to duck.”</p><p>
  <em>I agree with the latter. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The former depends on your definition of ‘okay.’ </em>
</p><p><em>From that hit, you’ll be lucky if you’re nose isn’t broken</em>.</p><p>“Boss, I’m sorry,” Kenny’s voice wavered, “I … I didn’t … I thought … I heard …” His voice trailed off. His face was a picture of guilt. On thankfully rare occasions, Kenny would get a little … violent … <em>not the right word usually. Fits this time</em> … coming out of flashback/nightmares. Everyone knew to be careful, but sometimes accidents still happened.</p><p>“I’m alright Kenny,” Jess replied, moving to lean on the edge of the bed.</p><p>Kat’s voice, the usually soft lilt surprisingly aggrieved, rose somewhat over the noise of the air-conditioning blowing and over Kenny’s repeated apologies. <em>Now what? </em>Barnes glanced over. <em>What’s got them at odds? </em>Kat was trying to rise from her seat off the bed. Clinton seemed to be disagreeing with that plan for some reason, but they were still speaking—<em>arguing for once … that doesn’t happen often</em>—in Mohawk, so Sheryll had no idea what was being said.</p><p>Clinton finally took a step backward, and Kateri made to rise but almost immediately went pale and started to waver before she was even fully on her feet. <em>Fever and dizziness, I’m guessing.</em> She quickly sat back down. <em>That explains that disagreement. Kat wants to check on Jess, and Clinton doesn’t think she’s up to it</em>. Barnes had wondered at first if Kat had a bad cold but now thought she might need to revise that up a notch. <em>Flu?</em></p><p>Kenny pulled his legs back, leaving Jess room to sit down on the end of the bed. A little blood had escaped the catch of his handkerchief and was trickling down his face to combine with the blood from his split lip.</p><p>
  <em>For being not totally with it, Kenny got in a d**n good punch!</em>
</p><p>“Jess, let me see,” Sheryll turned to him first. <em>Too many things going wrong at the same time. Clinton can take care of Kat</em>, and Hana had moved across to Kenny’s side and was talking to him softly. “Let me see.”</p><p>Jess pulled away the handkerchief slightly—more blood trickled out—and the crookedness of his nose was immediately apparent.</p><p>
  <em>D**n. </em>
</p><p><em>One more thing</em>.</p><p>“Your nose is broken, Jess,” said Sheryll. From the look in his eyes, Jess wasn’t surprised, though with all the other noise, she had never heard a crunch of bone. “We’ll need to go the ER to get it set.” she turned back toward the other bed, adding for Clinton’s benefit, “There’s IB in my go-bag for anyone who needs it. Just grab what you need.”</p><p>“Boss…” Kenny broke in again, “I’m sorry.” His face was almost stricken, and he looked quite shaken even after whatever Hana had said to him.</p><p>Sheryll stepped away to give them privacy and grabbed Jess’ coat from the ‘closet’ by the door. All she could catch of whatever passed between them was Jess’ “It’s okay. We can talk when we get back.” <em>Poor Kenny. This is the last thing he needs after yesterday</em> and <em>the craziness of the last six months</em>.</p><p>“Come on, Jess,” Sheryll helped him put on his coat, “The sooner we go, the sooner we get back.”</p><p>
  <em>And the sooner everyone can talk things out.</em>
</p><p><em>The last thing we need is tension … or guilt … simmering and screwing up team dynamics</em>.</p>
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